


High Tide

by fresne



Category: Mythology - Inuit, Mythology First Nations
Genre: Character of Color, Dark Agenda Challenge, F/M, Implied Non-Con, Yuletide, Yuletide 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sedna lay face up to the falling snow. She looked up with eyes that never closed. A crab scuttled across a wide eye, but she did not blink. She had lost that trick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vixen](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Vixen).



> The following inspiration for this work and inspiration for my dialogue, where I am not directly quoting, because apt quotes are cool:  
> Interstitial poems pulled from the song "Sedna" by Heather Dale.
> 
> podcast as read by luzula [here](http://www.sendspace.com/file/mrealu).

_Sedna roamed the deep,_  
The cold forgotten deep.  
No one wants to be alone...

Sedna lay face up to the falling snow. She looked up with eyes that never closed. A crab scuttled across a wide eye, but she did not blink. Rays played in her long white hair (blue hair, green hair, gray hair, black hair) that rippled out across the floor. Transparent ice fish nibbled at the falling snow. The flesh snow that always and forever fell down into the darkest of the deep. Warm shallow waters were a desert. Warm. Wet. Dead. She did not watch there. She watched in the cold dark deep.

Sedna said, "I have a story." The rays skimmed the surface of her. They tickled her with their long tails. A moon snail set across her lips. She spoke and they all came close.

"There once was a girl. A beautiful girl with long black hair, black as the Raven born on the first morning, and she was me and I am her." Sedna smiled with wide white teeth.

"All the men who saw her wanted her." Sedna spread her hands wide and she gathered them all in. "They wanted her eyes and lips and breasts and hips and thighs. She was a soup to them full of dried berries and cut up pieces of fish. So, she did not want them." The flesh snow fell on her. Covered her in flesh. Her listeners nibbled at as they listened. "She ran from them like a deer that they hunted, but never was caught. Her father, who'd tossed and tickled her when she was small, now he turned from her. Weary he said. Weary of her cold heart."

 

_From her hands they fell_  
Children of the ocean's swell  
With ice's twinkle given sight.  
She offered them a name  
And seals they all became,  
And laughing took a coat of dappled light.  
From her hands they fell  


On long shards of blue ice sculpture, seals lounged. Floated and spun by the currents as fresh chunks broke from the ice wall. They flopped themselves over as she spun them. As she drank in the streams that cascaded down the sheer steep cliff walls.

"One day a stranger came to the village with hair as black as the Raven on the first morning and lips as blue as the morning sky. He said to her father, who was my father, 'I have something to show you.' Blue Lips, he took them away from the water, and they followed him, we followed him, away from the streams and inlets from the sea. He took them all up to the mountains that are covered in snow even in winter."

A seal rolled from his perch. Splashed into the water and dived down deep. There was nothing to fear from the sea here in the cold fresh water. Not much to eat either.

"He sat them down on the ice and made them wait, made us wait for the moon to rise. A ghost girl, a dead girl, she ran across the ice, her bone bead dress spattered with old blood. She did not see us. She ran through us. Grey wolves with red eyes, they chased her. She cried out as they caught her. She cried out on the empty snow as they ripped at her throat. When they had done with eating her, she stood up, and she ran away from us across the snow. Blue Lips, he looked at the father of the beautiful girl, he looked at the father of the girl who was me and he said, 'This is what happens to those who reject the ones who love them.' The girl, she did not waver, she did not take Blue Lips hand, but he said it and the girl's father, he gave the girl to Blue Lips then. They all turned away from her. From the girl, the girl who was me."

__  
Ever in the sea to dwell,  
Nimble-fingered, quick and lithe.  
She offered them a name  
And otters they became,  
Keepers of her secrets in the ice.  


Sedna smashed at the the mighty forest of the shallow waters. She ripped at the trees of the deep and flung them high in her hands. She was a mountain of white and grey. She was a valley of black. She screamed, "Blue Lips, with his hair black as Raven born on the first morning, took her then. He took her in his claws and he flew away with his black wings. He carried her to a cave in a cliff by the sea. The birds could fly away. They nested in the cliffs. He nested in the cliff." She struck the water with a wide cold hand. "He took her as his wife, he took the girl, the girl who was me." She breathed in then. She breathed out then and was still. "The girl cried out on the wind, she begged the wind to carry her tears to her father, who had tossed and tickled her when she was small."

Otters slipped from the shore. They slipped into the sea to find what she had pulled up from the bottom for them. They tussled and played jokes. They laughed and they chuckled under their whiskers to lighten her mood.

She smiled at them. She tickled them. She slid down and spread her hair on the waves. "The kind wind carried her cold words to her father, who grew", she frowned just enough to skim the surface of the water with ice, "guilty over what he had done. He came for her in his fastest kayak. He pushed it across the waters. He climbed the cliff. She wept to see him. She kissed her father's cheek and she told him that she loved him. She told him that her heart, the heart of the girl, who was me was not cold at all."

 

_From her hands they fell,_  
The mightiest of all,  
Slow and gentle as the tides.  
She offered them a name  
And whales they all became  
To tread the paths the lesser are denied.

Sedna danced in the long streams of bubbles that floated to the surface, ever tightening as the humpbacks circled and the krill grew close to hear her story. "When Blue Lips came home, he did not see his wife. He did not see the girl who was me. He beat the water with his wings. He made a storm that tossed the kayak, hardly large enough for two."

The humpbacks danced around her. They sang their calls around her. One leaped over her knee, high in the air. He slapped the water with his tail.

Sedna whispered then, "Her father grew fearful. He threw her in the water. He threw his beautiful daughter in the cold water. He cried out that her pride had brought them to this."

An orca stopped in her play, her belly full from her morning's hunt. The orca grinned and bumped at her arm.

Sedna scratched the Orca under her jaw. "The girl, she reached out for the side of the kayak. She tried to climb back in, but her father, he beat at her hands with his paddle. He cried out that this was her own fault as her fingers froze and snapped. As her arms and legs shattered. She sank down into the deep. That was his last look at her, his daughter, of the girl who was me."

_Sedna roamed the deep,_  
The cold forgotten deep.  
No one wants to be alone...

Sedna lay face up to the falling snow. She looked up with eyes that never closed. "The girl sank down into the water. She named the pieces of herself. She named them and they became you, who are a part of me." Her long white (Blue. Green. Grey. Black) hair swayed with the currents that was her. "But she does not hate him, her father. Her people. The ones who let her be carried away." The crabs combed through her tangled hair and the rays swept the snow from her skin.

Then she smiled with wide white teeth, "But she might just eat Blue Lips if he ever dares come back to his cliff by the sea."

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
